


Ancient Mineshaft

by Kov_SR



Series: Minecraft One-Shots [5]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: And During a Writing Marathon, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Investigations, Mentions of Suicide, Realization, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:00:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25934800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kov_SR/pseuds/Kov_SR
Summary: She idly wonders about the question in the back of her mind, and unlike previous occasions, she does not immediately push her curiosity away.After all, she is so, so tired of the game, and she thinks now that maybe straying from her usual path will be the way to finding her own answers.
Series: Minecraft One-Shots [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867576
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Ancient Mineshaft

**Author's Note:**

> Whoooo writing marathon. This time you get some answers and actual PROGRESSION in the character’s thought process.

The dark tunnel yawns open in front of her, the wooden beams hanging above her head forebodingly. Many of the torches that were once amongst the passageways have broken or fallen from the walls, leaving the underground structure poorly lit. There are broken rails, leftover minecarts, forgotten chests – all reminders of how populated this place must have been at the height of its operation. For a moment, she could swear she hears the chatter of the workers there, conversations in an old and forgotten language – but when she listens to them closer, they simply disappear like the echoes of history that they are.

The player stares at the mineshaft with mild interest, seeing the cobwebs that smother the walls, and notes that there is likely a spawner for cave spiders somewhere in the mineshaft; Most of the neglected quarries have one within their depths anyway, she thinks. She idly wonders what they were used for, and unlike previous occasions, she does not immediately push her curiosity away.

After all, she is so, so tired of the game, and she thinks now that maybe straying from her usual path will be the way to finding her own answers.

(In the back of her mind, the player remembers the time she had frantically killed herself for several worlds in a row in an attempt to end it all – she was hurting and tired of everything she had seen, everything she was forced to do, and her desperation had increased further and further until she had finally spawned bawling in the middle of a village, and she had simply lain there while the villagers stepped around her in alarm. The golem had approached her, and as she looked up into its eyes, the living machine had handed her a flower, and she had seen the scars in its metallic body for so many battles and saw how it still had kindness in its heart and a willingness to protect and thought that maybe, maybe she needed to pull herself together and get up and find a better way.)

Following her curiosity for the first time in too many worlds to count, the player wanders the halls of the abandoned mineshaft. Her benefit here is twofold: She can both gain the valuable loot from the chests and she can investigate the spawner for clues as to its history.

As she roams through the corridors of the ancient quarry, she gathers up what she can find: several magical books that will enhance the capabilities of her tools and armor, some food that has been preserved despite the amount of time that has passed, and even a beautiful enchanted apple. She stores all of them away in her knapsack, trying to keep everything organized so as to make the sorting process easier on herself once she dumps it all into the chests back at her base.

And, just like she predicted, she stumbles upon the spawner in the midst of it all. It is covered in layer upon layer of sticky webbing, and she lets a string of colorful curses fall from her lips as her foot gets tangled in the bright white mess just as three cave spiders materialize out of thin air. She grips her dangerously shimmering diamond sword in her right hand, slashing apart the convoluted tangles of thread that hold her leg in place before swiftly ending the grotesque arachnids. She is careful to hold her shield in a way that will block their attempts at biting her – their fangs secrete poison, and while the toxins aren’t potent enough to kill her, it still leaves her vulnerable and is a rather unpleasant experience overall.

Once she has slain the last of the monstrosities, she hacks at the frustrating muddle of webbing until it is a pile of glistening string at her feet. As she nears the spawner, she feels its active presence; Much like the blaze spawners in the abandoned citadels of the Nether, it is malevolent, resentful of her desire to destroy its children and steal the treasure that they have hoarded for generations. Unlike the hatching grounds of the hellish fortresses, however, the spawners of the cave spiders do not burn her – no, they choke her, crushing her chest and throat more and more the closer she gets, much like the effects of the poison that their bothersome progeny produce.

The player desires to get away from the inhospitable attitude of the spawner, and so she decides to make her work quick. She hurriedly places torches around the spawner – the light stifles its overbearing aura, but does not expunge it completely – and she searches the surrounding area for anything that she can bring back to her quarters, anything that is likely to be of use. Her search is rewarded with a single enchanted book, but nothing much else, and that satisfies her enough to finally investigate the spawner for any potential clues to assuage her curiosity.

She starts by first examining the place around the spawner, and it is nothing special. The spawner is simply in the middle of an otherwise normal corridor of the mineshaft; the only other unusual thing about this particular hallway is the fact that it is overwhelmingly clogged with cobwebs. Thus, she turns her attention to the spawner itself.

The first thing she notices is that the spawners here and the spawners in the Nether are not merely similar – they are absolutely identical in every way aside from the tiny models of their prized children that spin in the center: They are made of the exact same metallic alloy, giving them perfectly matching hues of blue, and they have the exact same design of a geometric pattern with the face of a monster in the middle, its eyes set with dark purple jewels that the player has never seen anywhere else.

These similarities made one thing immediately clear: The spawners in the Nether and the spawners in the Overworld were made by the same hands.

Abruptly, the player whirls around, a chill going down her spine as she reaches for her sword. This means too many things all at once, and none of them bode well for her: If there was someone here before her, someone with the ability to create such things beyond her imagination and knowledge, compositions of such magnitude that even their empty remnants overpowered her, and the End of the world had still not occurred, then —

_Oh._

And with her realization, the spawner’s malice towards her seems to rekindle itself, and when she sees the flames begin to ignite threateningly around the spawner despite the torches, she bolts as fast as her legs will carry her.

She does not stop running or panicking until she reaches her base, a sad wooden shack in the side of a hill that barely qualifies as a suitable place for even a zombie to live, and she slams the door behind her with such intensity that she nearly sends it flying off its hinges. With anxiety still flying through her muscles, she moves until her back hits her bed, pulling the thin covers over herself in an attempt to ignore the world and her impending responsibility to face its End.

Because really, what was the point in fighting if those before her hadn’t stood a chance either?

**Author's Note:**

> Review and kudos are greatly appreciated - I would love to talk about the lore, and if you have questions don’t hesitate to ask.


End file.
